Design Details – May 2007

May 6th, 2007

Volume 01 // Number 05

May 2007

In this issue

• Getting down to basics
• Productivity
• Find of the Month

Hi,

This email newsletter comes to you in our never-ending pursuit of helping our friends and clients succeed because your success is our success.

Getting down to basics

Sometimes things are rushed. Hastily composed projects—in an effort to get something out the door quickly—are a response to immediate needs for your business. We’ve all been a part of this type of process at some point. I would be willing to bet that many times these efforts did not generate much success, at least as much as you wanted.

I’m here to tell you that even under tight deadlines and pressure you can generate results. There is a set of components that need to be considered with any visual design project for print or the Internet. In this newsletter, we will briefly review the first of these components, and in subsequent issues we will introduce the rest.

The first component, or step, for any project involves research. Research lays a strong foundation and provides a reference point once in the thick of a project. Good research includes asking questions and doing a background check. Here are the steps:

1. Ask the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of this project? What story do you want to tell? What is the purpose of this project? Bring in new customers? Re-energize existing ones?
2. Find existing examples of what you are trying to accomplish. Field research, print and/or web samples, and snapshots all help pull together ideas.
3. Create a typical scenario of a hypothetical story where your project is involved in the process. The scenario will touch upon motivation, price points, desired outcomes, etc.

All of these will help you understand what you are trying to accomplish with your project. Furthermore, it will help a designer understand a great deal about what you want. In the end, you will end up with the results you desire if the parameters of the project are spelled out in advance.

Productivity

I’m always looking for information and strategies relating to productivity. How to get more work done efficiently, effectively, and with smarter effort? To that end, I am subscribed to a few blogs (43Folders, LifeHacker, LifeDev, WebWorkerDaily, etc.) that continuously provide links to books, websites, products and ideas under the umbrella topic of productivity.

My stack of books waiting to be read all relate in some way to the topic of productivity. I just completed reading Dan Kennedy’s “No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs.” On the whole, the concepts in this book are possible but I think some are a bit extreme—especially if you are in a service business. For example he communicates to clients and others primarily through fax. No email and only scheduled calls. His philosophy behind using the fax is that people will give more thought to what they are putting on paper as opposed to shooting off emails, etc. thus resulting in more meaningful and reasoned communication. He has assistants help filter all other modes of communication that are targeted at him; everything that gets his attention has been ‘pre-screened.’

While I am not going to implement this particular strategy in my business routine, it did get me thinking about how and when I use communication tools. Am I using them effectively? Is there real purpose to what I am communicating? Am I allowing communications to interrupt the blocks of time I need to get projects done? So, overall I find value in looking for and reading this material to help me refine how I operate not only in business but also in life. Up now is “The Now Habit” by Neil Fiore, Ph.D.

Finally, Find of the Month

Every issue we share an Internet destination we have come across that has some application to doing business, getting things done, or just plain cool. This month it’s 43Folders as mentioned above. 43Folders is a website about productivity, life hacks and simple ways to make your life a little better. It is most definitely worth a visit.

That’s it for this month of DesignDetails. We’ll talk to you again in June.

Bert Mahoney
Publisher, DesignDetails
Principal and Creative Director, HamiltonBerchman Design Group, Inc.
details@hamiltonberchman.com